Author: T.

1.
Here is one thing I know: when my dog jumps on me and ruins my dress I am at once horrified at the paw prints but also secretly happy at this sudden display of love.

2.
Here is another thing I know: when I put socks on my father before he goes to sleep I am telling him everything I can’t say because we are two people inept at tenderness even if we have never shied away from each other’s embrace.

3.
What I don’t know I am practising to be grateful for.

Mysteries, YesMary Oliver

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the
mouths of the lambs.
How rivers and stones are forever
in allegiance with gravity
while we ourselves dream of rising.
How two hands touch and the bonds will
never be broken.
How people come, from delight or the
scars of damage,
to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say
“Look!” and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads.

—

This is from Evidence: Poems by Mary Oliver, published by Beacon Press, 2009.

1.
“How many of you, when faced with something good, begins to think of what could go wrong?” she asks. I sit here with my hands on my lap, knowing I should raise them, raise them as far as my arms can reach, towards that space where dread and anxiety live, an imaginary dark cloud above my head.

2.
I can’t remember how many times I did this—hold joy close to my chest and suffocate it with my doubt, each time a declaration of I don’t deserve this, each time a question of how long will this last?

3.
A month ago I was in another country, another city, in the middle of a highway. I was trying to cross to the other side, a sea of motorcycles before me. I walked quickly, aware of my space in the world, when I turned to my left and saw wheels fast approaching. I tried to step back, and then froze, certain of an accident, of pain, of possibly my heart stopping so far away from home. It didn’t happen—instead, I came face to face with someone who stepped on the breaks just in time. His face hidden behind a helmet, my face baring my strangeness in that place. My hand on my throat. Alive. Safe. Here.

4.
It seems too enormous, the universe’s plan for me. If there is a plan. Last night I found myself embracing the new year yet again. What now, T.? What now. If I’m still meant to be here, what now?

It seems too enormous just for a man to be
Walking on. As if it and the empty day
Were all there is. And a little dog
Trotting in time with the heat waves, off
Near the horizon, seeming never to get
Any farther. The sun and everything
Are stuck in the same places, and the ditch
Is the same all the time, full of every kind
Of bone, while the empty air keeps humming
That sound it has memorized of things going
Past. And the signs with huge heads and starved
Bodies, doing dances in the heat,
And the others big as houses, all promise
But with nothing inside and only one wall,
Tell of other places where you can eat,
Drink, get a bath, lie on a bed
Listening to music, and be safe. If you
Look around you see it is just the same
The other way, going back; and farther
Now to where you came from, probably,
Than to places you can reach by going on.

—

This is from The First Four Books of Poems by W.S. Merwin, published by Copper Canyon Press, 2000.

1.
Maybe fragments are what make my life. I gather them all together in my arms, carry what I can, from place to place: Here is where things have become disastrous; here is where I learned to live through the pain; here is where I’ve come to stand, knees trembling, after being bent double in grief.

2.
In a postcard which I wrote to my future self, I said, “The universe, in general, is kind. And isn’t that fantastic? You’ve got to trust the process, love.”

3.
I don’t ask for much these days, other than to occupy the spaces surrounding the word here.

4.
Maybe a fragment is what I am, all these years: Here is the self that threatens to crumble; here is the self who died a thousand times; here is the self who lived anyway.

5.
I am thirty-two today. The unknown before me.

6.
The mantra falls from my lips like a promise: Here. Here. Here.

Notebook FragmentsOcean Vuong

A scar’s width of warmth on a worn man’s neck.
That’s all I wanted to be.

Sometimes I ask for too much just to feel my mouth overflow.

Discovery: my longest pubic hair is 1.2 inches.

Good or bad?

7:18 a.m. Kevin overdosed last night. His sister left a message. Couldn’t listen
to all of it. That makes three this year.

I promise to stop soon.

Spilled orange juice all over the table this morning. Sudden sunlight
I couldn’t wipe away.

My hands were daylight all through the night.

Woke up at 1 a.m and, for no reason, ran through Duffy’s cornfield. Boxers only.

Corn was dry. I sounded like a fire,
for no reason.

Grandma said In the war they would grab a baby, a soldier at each ankle, and pull…Just like that.

It’s finally spring! Daffodils everywhere.
Just like that.

There are over 13,000 unidentified body parts from the World Trade Center
being stored in an underground repository in New York City.

Good or bad?

Shouldn’t heaven be superheavy by now?

Maybe rain is “sweet” because it falls
through so much of the world.

Even sweetness can scratch the throat, so stir the sugar well.—Grandma

4:37 a.m. How come depression makes me feel more alive?

Life is funny.

Note to self: If a guy tells you his favorite poet is Jack Kerouac,
there’s a very good chance he’s a douchebag.

Note to self: If Orpheus were a woman, I wouldn’t be stuck down here.

Why do all my books leave me empty-handed?

In Vietnamese, the word for grenade is “bom,” from the French “pomme,”
meaning “apple.”

Or was it American for “bomb”?

Woke up screaming with no sound. The room filling with a bluish water
called dawn. Went to kiss grandma on the forehead

just in case.

An American soldier fucked a Vietnamese farmgirl. Thus my mother exists.
Thus I exist. Thus no bombs = no family = no me.

1.
R. came by today and poured his heart out. There he was, gasping at the pain of it, clasping at something unnameable on his chest, keening, why does it hurt so much? I held his hand.

2.I wish I could tell you there was an answer, I began. I held his hand.

3.
He asked me about the people in my life, and I felt my heart constrict a little. At what has gone by. At what has passed. He asked me if I have loved. If I have lost. Our faces are both wet and maybe there is no need for words. I held his hand.

4.
What can we ever really do when we are broken? Because I’ve been here, I tell him, you are loved, and are worthy of being loved. I held his hand.

from East CokerT.S. Eliot

So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years–
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l’entre deux guerres
Trying to learn to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it, and so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate–but there is no competition–
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

2.
The new year breeds a new batch of questions. All longing to be answered, though not all meant to have one that will be easy to accept nor understand. Yet they are there, nevertheless, waiting to be asked.

3.
Beginning, again.

The Broken SandalDenise Levertov

Dreamed the thong of my sandal broke.
Nothing to hold it to my foot.
How shall I walk?
Barefoot?
The sharp stones, the dirt. I would
hobble.
And–
Where was I going?
Where was I going I can’t
go to now, unless hurting?
Where am I standing, if I’m
to stand still now?

—

This is from Poems 1968-1972 by Denise Levertov, published by New Directions, 1987.

1.
This is one of those beginnings where I’m both sure and unsure of what would happen to me. I know what I must do now, and I have a plan to do it, and yet it feels very much like I’m standing before a yawning abyss. Either I’m moving further forward towards the life I make, or I’m about to make a colossal mistake. It’s deliriously exciting and terrifying.

2.
Maybe all I can do at this point is forgive myself for what I’m about to do and what I will be unable to do, as the days come.

3.
I mean, that’s all the self is asking, right? To be loved and to be forgiven, and to be brave. The bravest I can be.

4.
Happy new year.

i am running into a new yearLucille Clifton

i am running into a new year
and the old years blow back
like a wind
that i catch in my hair
like strong fingers like
all my old promises and
it will be hard to let go
of what i said to myself
about myself
when i was sixteen and
twenty-six and thirty-six
even thirty-six but
i am running into a new year
and i beg what i love and
i leave to forgive me

1.
Belly full, and mind, and heart. An hour past midnight and well into a new morning. Thinking about all the days that led to this, and all the days after this one.

2.
Sometimes I find it so simple—to be happy. And sometimes it is exhausting and terribly difficult, and you almost question why until you catch yourself, and gently remember that in this world there are more questions than there are answers, and that’s okay.

3.
This moment: at the table, surrounded by people you love, a glass of wine in hand, and that quiet realisation that maybe this is all you need for tonight. That maybe this night will get you through other nights.

4.
Enough. Enough now.

5.
Merry Christmas.

PrayerGalway Kinnell

Whatever happens. Whateverwhat is is is what
I want. Only that. But that.